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Soviet Gulag Monsters - USSR's Political Repression - Documentaries. Welcome to DOCUMENTARIES - home of the best documentary movies and documentary films. The Gulag (Russian: ГУЛАГ, IPA: [ɡʊˈlak] (About this sound listen); acronym of Главное Управление Лагерей, Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerej, Main Camps' Administration or Chief Administration of [Corrective Labor] Camps) was the government agency in charge of the Soviet forced labor camp system which reached its peak during Joseph Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the 1950s. The term is also commonly used in English language to refer to any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union, including camps that existed in post-Stalin times.[1][2] The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The agency's full name was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Settlements (Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й и коло́ний, Glavnoye upravleniye ispravityelno-trudovykh lagerey i koloniy). It was administered first by the State Political Administration (GPU), later by the NKVD and in the final years by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). The Solovki prison camp, the first corrective labor camp constructed after the revolution, was established in 1918 and legalized by a decree “On the creation of the forced-labor camps“ on April 15, 1919. The internment system grew rapidly, reaching a population of 100,000 in the 1920s. According to Nicolas Werth, author of The Black Book of Communism, the mortality rate in the Soviet concentration camps strongly varied reaching 5% (1933) and 20% (1942-1943) while dropping considerably in the post-war years at about 1-3% per year at the beginning of the 1950s.[3][4] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, gave the term its international repute with the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973. The author likened the scattered camps to “a chain of islands“ and as an eyewitness he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death.[5] Some scholars support this view,[6][7] though this claim is controversial, given that the vast majority of people who entered the Gulag came out alive, with the exception of the war years.[8] Natalya Reshetovskaya, the wife of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said in her memoirs that The Gulag Archipelago was based on “campfire folklore“ as opposed to objective facts.[9] Numerous other accounts from survivors state otherwise, and the Mitrokhin Archive claimed that these memoirs were part of a KGB campaign, orchestrated by Yuri Andropov in 1974, to discredit Solzhenitsyn.[10] However, this archive itself has its veracity in doubt; among other, more practical issues, by the same token with which Vasili Mitrokhin claimed the Soviet government would obviously be interested in discrediting Solzhenitsyn, Western governments would have as much interest in lending him credence. In March 1940, there were 53 Gulag camp directorates (colloquially referred to as simply “camps“) and 423 labor colonies in the USSR.[11] Today's major industrial cities of the Russian Arctic, such as Norilsk, Vorkuta, and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners.[12] Read More About “Soviet Gulag Monsters - USSR's Political Repression - Documentaries“ - Subscribe to Documentaries to be the first to receive updates - Join us in our documentaries community discussion by following us in our documentaries Google community discussion - Thanks for watching DOCUMENTARIES - home of the best documentary movies and documentary films. #Documentaries #YouTubeMovies #DocumentaryMovies #Education #Entertainment Thanks for watching “Soviet Gulag Monsters - USSR's Political Repression - Documentaries“
